Times Change
by Periwinklerene
Summary: Three years after Portal 2, the Doctor finds Wheatley desperate and dying and tries to help him by taking him back to Aperture to fix him. Something goes wrong, and slowly the two find that they're at the center of something much, much bigger than themselves. (Updates on this story are available on my profile page)
1. Moron Ex Machina

Hello! Call me Em! I'm pretty nervous about releasing this thing into the public eye, but if I don't do it now, I doubt I ever will. I do have to admit to you guys that I'm _very much a greenhorn_. Critique is encouraged, and of course a little encouragement itself goes a long way. I would love a beta for this story, since, again, _I have no idea what I'm doing._

 _(Also there's probably gonna be cursing at some point if that bugs you)_

 _(plus this will probably be under a lot of revision if this pans out)_

Now that we have the warnings out of the way, I hope you enjoy this first chapter!

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Space. The celestial quilt upon which stars dance their waltz of life and death. The fire of the stars burning across the night on earth, giving it light while the sun sleeps. Many would call it beautiful; the expanse of the perpetual blackness. Such people would step into the open fold of silence and nothingness with welcome arms.

Wheatley was very much _not_ one of those people.

Space, Wheatley had decided, was not for him. He had more than plenty of reasons for this, of course. He even had a list.

Firstly: Space was very, very boring. The first few hours Wheatley had spent in space had actually been fascinating; seeing all the stars splashed across the sky. After all, he had never seen stars before- he had lived in the facility all his life. He'd caught glimpses of the moon in the facility, but even that had been more ghostly than celestial. After his "impromptu arrival", however, he could finally see what all the fuss was about. The starlight was definitely beautiful, and the stars themselves were bloody everywhere to boot. In some ways the light had been awe-inspiring, and had gave him some hope of rescue. The moon was enormous now, too- far bigger than he had imagined it was back at home. Its surface was covered in gigantic craters, valleys, and mountains, carved into the surface like some angry god had used it as a punching bag.

By the third week, however, the stars' brilliant sheen had lost its luster. Now, instead of infusing him with awe, the stars now sucked his hope away to whatever corner of the galaxy they lived in. Now, three years later, his little pocket of nothing was the exact same bloody nothing it was when he arrived. It was like time was frozen, locked in that horrible moment three years ago when he first got trapped in this semi-stasis.

Now, space was unbearably, excruciatingly, _agonizingly_ boring. Honestly, he was just amazed he hadn't lost his marbles by this point (but if he hadn't yet, he would before much longer.)

Secondly: Space was cold. The moon had a nasty habit of getting very cold, very quickly. Of course, as an A.I. Construct, he knew he had been built to withstand virtually anything they could cook up in the lab, including cold (well, at least he hoped, he'd never actually checked), But _bloody hell_ they did _not_ forget the pain sensors. Every time he crossed over to the dark side of the moon, he could feel his joints and casing freezing up, and to say that being a Wheatley-sicle was unpleasant would be more than an understatement.

And to top the list off, the winning prize for the worst thing about space-

"SPAAAAAAACEEEEE!"

-was the core he was stuck listening to for the rest of his life.

"Yup... Space," Muttered Wheatley under his breathe. "It's not like I could miss it." Wheatley turned in his socket to see the core actually talking to him, and not to the endless vacuum that it loved so much.

"But what if you forgot space? Space would be angry. so angry you forgot space." It chittered at him.

"it's pretty bloody hard to forget, mate." He said, not expecting any real answer.

The sphere next to him looked almost identical to himself; a metal ball about two feet in diameter, two handles on either side, and a single swiveling, enormous, brightly-lit electronic optic. The only physical difference was where Wheatley's optic was sky blue from iris to pupil, the other guy had a lemon yellow synthetic iris with a pitch black center that darted erratically from one open section of space to the next, as if it was somehow going to blink out of existence if he looked away from any section of it for longer than picosecond. Frankly, Wheatley wasn't sure how to feel about the guy. On one hand- _er, not really hand_ , - he didn't hate the other core, but it was probably safe to say that having someone screaming in their ear for three years continuously would annoy most people, and robots.

"Sp-space Family! Space family is here! 'Hello son!' Hello space dad! 'Space dad loves you, son.' Space dad is nice... Space is sad." The core twitched and went silent once more. Wheatley didn't even bother responding, and simply went back to thinking. Thinking was a hard thing for him to do, but not because it was difficult. Although, if that were the case, it would probably be easier. No, it was because the same thought would never leave him be.

"... I'm sorry." He said almost unconsciously, staring down at the Earth. "I had never met someone who trusted me so much," Wheatley's thoughts once again went back to that horrible time. "But then... I blew it. I... I... I really did. I'm so sorry. I wish... I wish I had just one more chance. Just...Just one." He turned his gaze away from the condescending glare of Earth, trying to distract himself with any other topic.

He settled on something that had been bothering him all his life. "I wonder what color a mirror is? Green, maybe? Nah, blue. They're totally blue. Are they green? Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, it has to be something, right? Can it be more than one color?" Wheatley's train of thought was shattered by the shrill of his "companion's" vocal processor.

"SpAaaCEe.."

Wheatley heard the other core, but the noise it had made was far from normal, instead sounding warped and disjointed, like shattered glass.

"Huh? Buddy? You alright over there? You sound awf...fine! Totally..." Wheatley swiveled his optic around, but what he saw sent a chill up his wires. "...fine?"

The yellow optic of the other core flickered dimly, and its typical erratic movement was gone. It simply floated there, as if frozen in time.

"A-are you alright? S-should I..." Wheatley's voice trailed off. He had almost said "get help," but what sort of help were they going to get out in the middle of literally nowhere? There weren't any repair stations out here, that was for sure. If something really was wrong with the other guy, there was nothing he could do. It spoke again, voice weak.

"C-cannot seE Earth. Is Earth theEere?" The other core's optic was directed directly to the planet.

"You're looking right at it! C'mon, mate, this isn't funny anymore. You're starting to make me nervous." Wheatley pleaded.

"EaAarth is nice. I will miss EeEeearth. Earth is aAaaAlive." It said, ignoring Wheatley's pleas.

gOOodbye...Earth..."

With that, the core's optic went black.

Wheatley began panicking.

"Uh, mate?" He said, voice quivering. "Are you...? You're not... No, no you're- Oh no, oh no, y-you are aren't you?! Oh nonononononono, this bad, this is really, really bad!"

Wheatley was horrified, not only because his only company in the last three years had suddenly gone the way of the dodo, but if something went wrong with that guy, then something might be wrong with _him_.

He scrambled to do a diagnostic, something he hadn't done since he had gotten stuffed into the biggest prison in the universe.

"Oh, God. Ohhhhhh God. Oh no. Ohhhh nooooooooooo."

The results may as well have been playing taps.

The diagnostic pulled up a long list of problems, most of them Wheatley developed before his... Permanent vacation. But what he saw on the very bottom of the list was perhaps one of the scariest things in his life.

 **WARNING: CORRUPTED BATTERY, BATTERY POWER FALLING. IF A REPLACEMENT BATTERY CANNOT BE FOUND, PLEASE SEE CORE CONSULTANT FOR COUNSELING BEFORE PERMANENT SHUTDOWN AND SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.**

"Oh, god, how much charge to I have left?!" He wailed, scrambling through the diagnostic.

 **CURRENT BATTERY LIFE LEFT: 2%**

 _I regret asking_.

He wasn't just any type of royally screwed, he was Frankenstein-turret-vs- bottomless-pit- screwed.

Somehow, space had earned another point on his list: _nowhere to get repaired in case of battery failure_.

"I'm going to die." He moaned. "I'm gonna to die and there's nothing I can do. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada..." Maybe he should just resign to his fate, he thought. Maybe it would make it easier. _No! Don't think like that! Would **she** have thought like that?_

 _But you're not her. Said a tiny part of him. You can't use portals, you can't move on your own, you're not even that clever. You couldn't save a mp3, let alone yourself_.

"Get a hold of yourself, Wheatley!" He snapped. He may be a bit of a weak-willed individual, but that never kept him from hope before. Wheatley tried to calm down, but the fate of the other core was still fresh in his mind, not helping him in the slightest. "Alright, uhm... Just need- just need to calm down... I've still probably got a day left... Um... Maybe somebody will come and save me! Yes! Somebody will come, and that somebody will fix me up, and I won't die! Oh, and the other bloke too, fix him up as well. It will all be fine - as long as that is what happens- if that doesn't happen, well, then I die out in space, totally alone, with my body orbiting the moon, forever. But! The first one is still possible, and that's what's important! Just... Have to wait for... For somebody."

Wheatley closed his optic, and waited.

Then... he heard something. He didn't think much of it at first; it was probably nothing, static or something. But then he heard it again seconds later. It was nearly impossible to describe, except like a gust of wind stuck on repeat. Wheatley span around, trying to find the source. Maybe it was someone here to rescue him!

"Oh, please, please, please be somebody, anybody!"

The wheezing was strengthening, roaring in his audio receivers. Wheatley continued to spin erratically, hoping against all hope for a savior, when he caught something out of the corner of his optic.

 _Wait... Is there...? No, that's crazy! No, wait t-there is! Something's appearing!_

As soon as he looked over however, whatever it was faded away. He wondered if he'd just imagined it, but then the strange thing phased back into reality.

There indeed was something materializing in front of Wheatley, and soon it was entirely solid, floating only about a meter and a half away from him.

It was an enormous two-doored blue box.


	2. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Hello! This will probably be the only chapter for a little bit, because this was the only other chapter I had set up already. Like before, reviews are appreciated greatly, and I hope that you guys enjoy!

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Wheatley had seen some strange stuff in his life, but this thing was way up the list.

The box was big enough, Wheatley imagined, to hold a whole human inside comfortably. A light about six inches in diameter perched itself upon the top of the box, and below it were the words "POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX" in bold white letters. There were two rectangular windows, split into six smaller segments each, and a dilapidated sign was plastered on the right door, leaving only "PULL TO OPEN" legible.

Wheatley stared gobsmacked at the thing, still trying to load this new information. So many questions were jostling for his attention. How did it get there? Why was it there, of all places? Who was behind its arrival? How had it just appeared like that? Whatever was inside wasn't going to kill him, right?

But they were gnats in comparison to a single thought.

 _I'm saved!_

True, under any other circumstances, he would have been downright terrified. Weird box thing materializing out of thin air? Never! Right then and there, though, he felt like he was running at a million volts."I'm gonna live! I'm gonna live! Aha! _I'm gonna bloody live!_ " He cried.

Suddenly, the door of the box sprang open, and Wheatley recoiled in surprise with a loud yelp. A head popped out of the opening, soon followed by a torso and two arms. It was a man, Wheatley could tell that much. The mystery man had a pale face with spiky, tousled brown hair. He wore a wrinkled, tawny overcoat over a chocolate brown pinstripe suit. Under the coat, a burgundy tie on top of a white undershirt sat lazily on his chest, as if it was only there for a cheap ride. His brows were furrowed with what Wheatley figured was annoyance -he was never very good at human expressions- as he stared into the box, muttering intelligible phrases. Something about "Off-course." Or maybe it was "Of course." He couldn't tell.

The strange arrival turned around and Wheatley yelped again. The man's eyebrows unknotted immediately, instead flying up in interest. His deep brown eyes stared into Wheatley's optic with what could only be described as childlike curiosity.

"Hello! Who're you?" The man said. His voice was perky, and although Wheatley couldn't put his handle on it, there was something very familiar about the manner in which this man talked. The mannerisms, perhaps?

"Me? Oh, uh, name's Wheatley!" he stammered. Rather to the point, this bloke.

"Wheatley?" The man grinned, leaning towards Wheatley slightly from the box frame. "Alright then, Nice to meet you, Wheatley! You can call me the Doctor!"

"The Doctor? That works. Doctor 'who', if you're alright with me asking? Doctor... Smith? Doctor Jones? Doctor Pepper?"

"Just the Doctor." He sounded as though he had rehearsed that line. Or had repeated it so many times that it was routine. "By the way, what year is it?"

"I'm...not exactly sure. Bit of a strange question." Wheatley replied. He had no idea, now that he gave it some thought. Everybody vanished from the facility around 2011, nothing happened for a while, and then he hatched his escape plan three years ago. That was it. Is that a bad sign? He found himself wondering.

"But, um, listen... " Wheatley began, breaking eye contact (if he'd had feet he would have been shuffling them sheepishly) before quickly looking back. "I'm in a bit of bind here, so do you, uh -just be honest here- have any experience with fixing personality cores? At all? T-that's what I am, by the way. A personality core. Probably should have mentioned that."

"Personality Cores?" The Doctor paused for a moment, and Wheatley could see the man rifling through dusty files in his head. "Nope! Can't say I have." He chirped happily.

Wheatley's hopes went up like the Hindenburg. _It's never that easy is it? I Might as well write 'lost cause' on my casing._

"Oh. O-okay. Um... I guess that's that, then..." Wheatley said weakly.

"I might be able to help, though."

 _Huh?_ Was he dead or wasn't he? "...Sorry? I-I don't think I heard that right."

"I'll Help you out! Well, if I can. Hard to know this stuff until you give it a good sonicking." He pulled out a little metal rod from somewhere deep in his trench coat and tossed in his hand a few times.

Wheatley didn't know what he meant by 'sonicking', but he was too happy to care. "You really mean it?! You'll help me out?!"

" 'Course! Just need to get you into the TARDIS."

"The what?"

"The TARDIS. She's my ship!" He patted the wooden box affectionately.

"Wait, so that box thing..."

"Yepperoo!" The Doctor said. His face crunched immediately after saying that, as though the word seemingly leaving a bad taste in his mouth. "Ugh. Not saying that again."

"So you're going to take me with you?"

"'Course! I'm not heartless! Here, let's get you inside."

The other core flashed in his memory banks, and he mentally slapped himself for nearly forgetting it so quickly. "Waitwaitwaitwait! I almost forgot. A uh... 'Friend'... of mine is stuck here too. Can you get him too? He's right... Actually, where is he?" Wheatley swiveled around, and couldn't locate him. A few seconds of worry later, his optic landed on the corpse, or the closest thing to a corpse, of the other guy drifting off ever so slowly into the blackness.

"There he is. Dead as a doornail." He said sadly, the moment of death coming back. "Shut off only a few minutes ago. No idea what finally did him in. Anyway, do you... Do you think you could try to help him?

"Sure. Don't see why not." The doctor leaned out of the doorframe and grabbed one of Wheatley's handles, and then pulled himself back in, taking Wheatley inside the box.

"I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am, seriously!" Wheatley rambled as the Doctor pulled the both of them inside. "I mean, if anybody had told me yesterday that I was going to be saved, I wouldn't have believed 'em! Actually, that's probably not a good example, cooOOH my GOD!"

That small blue box Wheatley had just been put in?

Apparently, not so small.

"Bloody hell... It's bigger on the inside!" Wheatley exclaimed.

"Really? Must have slipped my mind." Said the Doctor absently.

Wheatley ignored him. This place was such a shock it was all he could do to keep his circuits from frying. They were in a dome-like room with a strange centerpiece that held hundreds of buttons, levers, knobs, and other control mechanisms. A column of light blue light pulsated inside a transparent casing. Enormous coral like columns grew out of the floor, piercing through to the ceiling. Below himself and the doctor was a metal gangway that led up to the console, similar to the metal walkways used by maintenance folk back at the facility. The roof covered them like an umbrella, in which the strange cylinder would be the handle. Wires were draped along the domed roof, and a warm light came out empty sockets that had been cut out of the hull.

"The lab people would have had a field day with this thing! I mean, look at it!" Wheatley laughed giddily. Wheatley suddenly felt very heavy as the doctor shut the door, and he realized the gravity must be returning. It was a very strange feeling after floating weightless for all that time.

The Doctor grunted, suddenly bearing thirty pounds of robot in one arm. He swiftly gripped the empty handle on Wheatley with his other hand. Wheatley yelped, startled by the sudden movement. The Doctor then carried him around the strange centerpiece over to the opposite end of the room, where a guard rail protected the pathway to the underbelly of the control center.

"Just going to set you right... There." He placed Wheatley on a beige car seat connected to the guardrail.

"next, that other fella..." The doctor turned his attention to the control panel in front of him. He slid a small gyro ball under his hand on the control panel, and Wheatley felt the entire room shiver. A couple of seconds of spinning later, the doctor dashed back to the door and the other core sat right outside.

 _Hold up. Wasn't he super far away a minute ago?_ Wheatley thought, baffled. The Doctor was hidden partially from view, but the robot could easily see him hefting the spherical robot into the control room. The doctor walked back over to him and in a single swing, took Wheatley in by the handle and swapped him out with his defunct counterpart.

"Oi! Careful!" Wheatley said. "I'm already not in great shape at the moment, I don't need more life threatening errors!"

"Sorry. Cut a guy some slack." The Doctor huffed. He then heaved Wheatley onto the only empty portion of the control panel. The Doctor walked back to the other bot and pulled the small rod from his pocket out again. He pointed it at the corpse, and the rod emitted a high pitched whir. Two seconds later the whirring stopped, and the Doctor stared at the rod intently. Seemingly finishing what he wanted to do, he lowered the rod. He walked back over to Wheatley, his smile not quite as honest as before.

He pulled out the small metal rod again, and Wheatley could see the entire thing in much more detail.

"Alright! Let's see what the problem is..." The Doctor chirped, as a small blue light flicked on at the tip of the rod.

"Um, if I might ask..." Wheatley said, and laughed nervously. "What is that? T-that thing you're holding? Just out of curiosity's sake, of course."

"Oh, this? This is my sonic screwdriver! Opens doors, gives status reports, the whole shebang!" He twirled it happily in his hand. "Like so!"

He pointed the screwdriver at Wheatley, a high pitched hum emitting out of the device.

"Wait, is that... Oh, that tickles, stop that!" Wheatley giggled uncontrollably for a moment, before the doctor pulled it up parallel to his face, perusing it like a construction manual. The Doctor let loose a low whistle.

"You two are really something else, way ahead of your time!"

Had he just been complemented? _Him_? He was at a loss for words. That was the first complement he had received in... longer than he could remember. The Doctor did not seem to notice, as he immediately went back to looking at the rod-thing with his face crumpled in concentration."Well... This could be a problem."

"What? What's a problem?" Wheatley asked.

"I don't think I have what I need here to fix a photon-based regenerative energy cell."

"What?"

"Fancy solar battery." The Doctor paused and looked at him as though he grew a second optic, "Hold on, should you of all things know that?"

"Hey, they just put stuff in us and we go about our business, alright? Humans don't know what their kidney does, do they? Seriously, why do humans even have those?" Now it was his turn to pause. "Wait, You 'don't have what you need to fix it'?"

"I'd need a brand new energy cell, and don't even get me started on your friend."

"B-but I don't want to die!" Wheatley exclaimed. If there was no replacement...!

"Calm down, calm down. I tracked down the manufacturing location, and lo and behold, there's signs of heavy electrical activity in the area. We'll just go there and see if they have what we need." The Doctor soothed.

"Manufacturing location...? You mean... Back _there_? Umm... Let's consider some other options first, alright? N-no rush, no rush. Just want to make sure that this is the 100% right thing to do."

"Only place, already did a full scan."

 _Of course, why not?_ He thought.

"How are we even gonna get there, anyway?" Wheatley realized.

"Teleporting spaceship, remember?" The Doctor replied, as though that were the most obvious thing in the world.

"You never said anyth- Oh! The thing you did outside! The appearing thing! Oh, yeah, knew the whole time. Totally. Never left my mind for a second."

The Doctor gave him a bemused smirk.

"That's settled, then." The Doctor slid the sonic screwdriver back into his pocket, and began pulling levers, hitting buttons, and spinning cranks, and the entire room thrummed to life. The pillar of light undulated in front of him, and the lights brightened and dimmed in waves. The entire room began to shake. "Allons-y!"

The entire room tried to buck them out, but the Doctor looked like he was on favorite roller coaster. Wheatley began slipping off the control board, unable to do anything but flail his handles.

"CATCH ME!" he yelled. The Doctor caught him in one hand while smashing a rubber button with a hammer in the other.

"I gotcha!" The Doctor yelled back.

" **WARNING: CORE PHOTON BASED REGENERATIVE ENERGY CELL SELF DESTRUCTING IN T-MINUS TWENTY SECONDS. PLEASE CLEAR THE VICINITY SO THAT SCIENCE IS NOT IMPEDED BY LAWSUITS CAUSED BY INJURIES OR DEATH.** "

They both turned towards the source of the voice to see the other core. The optic seemed to be counting down.

Counting down to zero.

"No, no, no! Not in the TARDIS!" The Doctor rotated a large dial almost in a panic. Immediately, the ship stopped shaking with a loud CLUNK."

Wheatley did not like where this was going.

"Hey, uh, Doc? If you have a plan-AUGH!"

The Doctor snagged Wheatley mid-sentence off the console and bolted towards the door. Wheatley could feel the Doctor's feet pounding the grating.

"FIVE SECONDS TO SELF DESTRUCT."

The Doctor bodied the door with Wheatley in tow and fell out into the open, and Wheatley collided with the floor as the Doctor lost his grasp from the impact. The door shut violently behind them, and Wheatley saw the TARDIS's windows brighten by a sliver, followed by a tiny _whumpf_ from within.

Wheatley watched as the Doctor ran back to the door. "No, no, no!" he moaned. He ripped open the door, only to get a face full of smoke. He muttered something under his breathe. He closed the door quickly, and turned back towards Wheatley.

"You better be worth it." He said.

"Wait, how was I supposed to know that he'd just explode like that?!" Wheatley responded, a little offended. "It's not like I just told him 'Hey, why don't you blow up my only chance of living beyond the next two hours? That'd be swell, thanks!'" Wheatley felt slightly shocked at how cross he had sounded- that had been _far_ more than he had intended. "...Sorry. Don't know what came over me there."

"Not a problem. Let's... just get this done, alright? I don't want to leave her in such a sorry state for long." He cast a wayward glance at the rectangular box behind him, before he turned back around and looked up, squinting at something above him. "So, this is your manufacturer?"

Wheatley spun to look up towards whatever the new guy was looking so intensely at.

It was a cracked, withered banner with a company name faded on in unassuming font. one that Wheatley was very familiar With.

He had always felt deep in his program this place wasn't done with him.

"We... We really are back, aren't we? Well.." Wheatley looked up at the Doctor. "Welcome to Aperture."


	3. Questions and No Answers

Hey! I'm back. The response has been amazing, and I just wanted to thank all of you who have followed, favorited, and reviewed. This chapter was pretty hard to nail down in terms of pacing and tone, so any advice on how I could improve this chapter specifically would be great.

Also, this one's a little shorter, sorry about that. The settings were really hard to nail down without bogging down the story with unimportant details, otherwise this may have been longer.

Last thing in order: The chapter after this one. I can only offer the very rough estimate of about three weeks-ish for that to come out.

Okay, enjoy!

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All things considered, the Doctor had been in worse binds before. Although, having a bomb explode inside his spaceship definitely wasn't ideal.

He ignored that little fact, and took a moment to analyse their new location.

The place was definitely old. Hundred years? Maybe two? It was certainly late 20th to early 21st century, but it didn't look like the sort of place capable of creating a sentient AI. In fact, it looked like an office building. Of course, the Doctor knew not to take things at face value. After all, the TARDIS- or Time and Relative Dimension in Space- hid itself as a phone box, of all thing.

Dying lightbulbs dimly lit the room in a sickly blue hue, and grey file cabinets lined every wall. Perhaps the cabinets had been white once, before decades of dust had covered them. Dead computer monitors sat on small desks, and office chairs were scattered across the floor. Above them a banner dangled on the ceiling, reading 'HAPPY BRING YOUR DAUGHTER TO WORK DAY FROM APERTURE SCIENCE.' The words on it were still fresh, even though the office had been abandoned for decades.

 _Aperture Science?_ He wondered. He'd never heard of them before. He doubted they were some small time company with the energy reading he had gotten back at the TARDIS.

Sadly, standing around wasn't going to do either of them any good, especially when it was there were other things that needed his attention. The Doctor looked at the blue-eyed robot at his feet and tossed on a smile.

"So! how do we get you where we need you to be, huh?" He picked Wheatley up from the orange carpet and held the robot front of him.

The Doctor liked Wheatley, in a way. He didn't seem too bright, but he was nice enough. He certainly didn't seem dangerous. However, he _did_ wonder how the bot managed to get himself stuck in space. It would definitely be something to ask about once Wheatley was fixed.

A couple seconds passed, and the Doctor still hadn't received a response to his earlier question. Before the Doctor could ask if something was troubling the robot, Wheatley shook himself away from whatever was troubling him.

"H-huh? O-oh! The repair ward, right. Right..." Wheatley looked around for a moment, making small tutting sounds as he did, before shouting, "Look, up there! That's a management rail!" His voice bubbled with excitement. "And, hey! It even has the moving bit, perfect!"

The Doctor followed the little robot's gaze up to the ceiling, where a black rail snaked along the length of the office, and connected a white hinged pole right above him.

"If you can just hook me into that thing stickin' out of it, I can go all around the facility without you carrying me!" Explained Wheatley.

The Doctor thought back to the diagnostic and blueprint analysis of Wheatley in his sonic screwdriver, and remembered that there was a socket on the back of Wheatley that could plug into most outlets. He grunted under the weight, but managed to lift Wheatley up to the pole.

a series of whirs and clicks signaled the connection, and the Doctor let go. Wheatley shut his eye with a clack, like he was prepared to fall. _What, does that not normally work?_

A second or two passed in silence before Wheatley tentatively opened his eye again. He blinked, then looked around. "He-hey! It worked! Honestly didn't think that would work. Looks like I've still got it! A-and you, Doctor. You were very helpful." He squinted in concentration down to the end of the building. "Alright...now... The repair ward..." He paused, then exclaimed "Ah! This way!"

He didn't move. "Huh?" Wheatley said, "Oh... Okay, okay. Gimme a sec with this..." The doctor heard a soft _click_. "There we go!" Wheatley zipped a foot along the rail, then quickly zipped back. "Heh, heh. Handbrakes! Alright, follow me!" chirped Wheatley, then began moving along the line.

The Doctor followed, although he was beginning to have his doubts about how capable Wheatley really was. As they moved out of the cubicle room, they approached a small door labeled in plain text, "PLEASE LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING CHASM".

"Chasm?" The Doctor looked at the Wheatley for an explanation.

"It's probably better if you just see for yourself." Wheatley responded.

The doctor shrugged, and pushed on door handle.

He was greeted by an enormous cavern loaded with thousands upon thousands of different wires, containers, transport tubes, and manipulatable panels. The only thing stopping him from plummeting to his death were he to go forwards was a small metal walkway extending farther than he could see. Technology buzzed around the cravasse, creating a whole new world from the one presented in the abandoned office. The Doctor nodded in a sort of ' _Well, they're not lying'_ sort ofway.

"Wow. So this is where you came from? This has to be one of the biggest underground facilities I've seen on Earth." He had to admit he was starting to have a little fun.

"I know, right? This place is huge!" exclaimed Wheatley. "That goes down for miles, you know. No exaggeration. Miles!"

"No kidding? What do they keep down there, small planets?" The Doctor replied sarcastically.

"I actually don't know. It was all closed off years and years ago."

"And why was that?"

"I already said I don't know. Maybe some crazy experiment gone wrong? Who knows?"

 _Some crazy experiment?_ He didn't like the sound of that. But he wasn't going to learn anything standing around.

"Alright, alright. Let's get a move on then," The Doctor conceded. "You know the way, right?"

Wheatley nodded. "Yep. Follow me."

The Doctor followed Wheatley along the pathways for a while, Wheatley jabbering as they went.

This was a good time for the Doctor to think about what was _really_ going on in this place. Why had this robot - one obviously not designed for space- ended up orbiting Earth's moon? How had this absolutely gargantuan science facility been unnoticed by the world? Why had Wheatley been nervous about coming here? Even worse, those were just a few of his questions. Frustratingly, there were just too many pieces missing in the puzzle for him to figure it out. He wished he could have gotten a more accurate reading on this place while they'd been on the TARDIS before she'd, well, exploded.

She'd be fine, of course, but part of him was still mad that he hadn't seen that coming. He had seen via sonic screwdriver that the robot could have been volatile, but he hadn't realized that it was a self-destruct mechanism until it was too late.

It was his job to protect her, just like she'd protected him so many times before, and he'd screwed up. He hoped she wouldn't be too mad at him for long.

The Doctor's train of thought was broken when they stopped in front of a pair of metal hospital doors embedded into the rock wall. Wheatley eyed the door warily, even though the Doctor didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

After a few more seconds of staring, Wheatley muttered "Maybe I can..."

But Wheatley seemed to shiver at the thought. "No, no. Bad idea. Bad idea."

He turned towards the Doctor and asked sheepishly, "Hey, uh.. can you open this?"

The Doctor shot Wheatley a skeptical glance before asking "Why can't you open it?"

 _What's got him so frightened?_

"I don't have access." Wheatley replied simply.

The Doctor was still hesitant, but he reluctantly agreed to do it. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver from his coat and set it to unlock. Half a second later, The Doctor heard the lock click, and pushed the door open.

The room they had entered was already lit with a series of struggling lights. Brilliant white tiles lay single file on the floor, and the walls were plastered the same clinical white. A single active computer sat five feet away from them on a table built into the wall. Otherwise, the room was totally barren.

"This is the repair ward. Home sweet home." Wheatley said with a sigh.

"You don't sound enthused." The Doctor commented.

"I guess so," He replied. "I'm not really sure yet. I mean- actually, nevermind." The core shook his optic. "Let's just try and find the batteries, alright? Sound good?"

"Oh, come on! Now I'm curious!"

"H-honestly, it's nothing. Just a... uh, bad check-up."

The Doctor bit his cheek. He didn't want to let it go, but it was clear that something about this place made the robot very uncomfortable. Plus, so far as he could tell, there wasn't a good reason create undue stress on Wheatley, what with his battery already struggling to keep him alive. He'd ask later.

"Alright, fine." He conceded.

The Doctor walked over to the table and pulled his screwdriver back out of his pocket. Aiming directly at the monitor, he set the screwdriver to stealthily search for the batteries he needed. As a second thought, he also told it to pull up the blueprints. Just in case. If he'd had more time to really scour the database, he would have, but they were really starting to get pressed for time. He heard the familiar low hum as it worked its way into the system.

The computer wasn't being very cooperative.

"Come on... Work with me." He muttered.

"Everything alright over there?" Called Wheatley from behind.

"Yeah. Yeah- just, uh, gimme a moment." He replied distractedly.

He decided to try a slightly more risky method. He didn't like using it as much, because it was far more about brute forcing the information he needed out of the system. But when he was in a bind and he needed it, it worked. He turned the screwdriver on again, this time with it emanating a much higher trill.

The computer did not like that. in fact, it disliked it so much, it called security on him. The Doctor heard Wheatley yelp as the door locked to his left, and saw the lights dim and redden. The a whirring sound behind him caused him to spin around, as the wall directly behind him opened up to show a conveyor belt lit in the same red as the rest of the room.

 _Dammit_. This was why the Doctor didn't use that setting.

"Oh, no!" Cried Wheatley as he sped to the door, shaking. "This is bad! This is _really, really_ bad! She can't find me! She can't, she can't!"

"Who, Wheatley?!" The Doctor yelled. "Who's _She_?!"

The Doctor heard a woman's voice, robotic and cold, come from the monitor behind him.

" **Oh. Hello.** "


	4. Pressing Buttons

**Holy sweet mother of Jesus it's done.**

 **I am _so_ sorry it took this long. I'm going to make next month's deadline about a month from now so that this (hopefully) doesn't happen again (It totally will.)**

 **On the bright side, this chapter is twice as long as the rest so far. Frankly, It'd better be, a lot of time was put into this chapter.**

 **Thanks again for waiting, and thanks especially to all those new followers and reviewers. Tell me your thoughts on this chapter if you have the time, so I can make the next one even better. Because trust me, the next chapter's gonna be _fun..._**

(Changes as of 2/1/17: descriptions slightly altered, some dialogue and monologue changes, typos fixed.)

(BIG CHANGE as of 2/11/17: Added a bunch of stuff at the end, consider it an appetizer for the next chapter. You know the kind -the ones that are _almost_ full meals on their own but not quite? It's basically that but instead of caesar salad it's word salad. Bon appetit.)

* * *

 **"So. You're what's been interfering with my systems."**

Just as the voice finished (which, he noticed, spoke with an American accent) , the conveyor belt in front of the Doctor brought in five small robots. These oval shaped robots were the same white as the room, stood on three spindly support struts, and had a single red eye. They might have even been cute, had each of them _not_ opened two side panels to reveal dozens of gun barrels, and had there _not_ been five lasers now pointing at his chest.

Oh, the Doctor did _not_ like this. He did not like this one _itty-bitty bit_.

 **"Turn** **around and tell me who you are."**

The Doctor stole a glance to check on Wheatley. He found him quivering in silence by the door, eye wide in terror. The Doctor had a feeling that this had been what Wheatley was afraid of this whole trip. He would have to be on high alert.

 **"I'm waiting."**

"Alright, alright. Don't get your software in a twist." He grumbled. He turned his back on the turret robots and faced towards the screen.

A new robot, one the size of a small bus, judging by the surroundings, now was being displayed by the harsh blue-light of the screen. The room that held it was covered in large jet-black panels, and coalesced in a domed ceiling, where the body of the massive robot met the top of the ceiling and the screen display. It's body was segmented into three parts, a rectangular head, a bigger semicircular part, and a circular segment. Each piece connected to each other by mountainous tangles of cords and wires. A white carapace protected the bottom side and the head of the robot, while the rest was black. Two large cords-accented in orange- seemed to be keeping the automaton positioned at an angle to the floor. The rest of the wires siphoned through the top of the largest piece and disappeared into the ceiling. The robot glared at him through a long, orange optic. It was different from the other robots' eyes. This one was more... intimidating.

 _I'd better not keep her waiting._

"My name is the Doctor, no more, no less." He stated.

 **"The Doctor?"** Her eye narrowed further. She clearly wasn't convinced. **"** **Fine. Tell me then, 'Doctor', what exactly you are doing stumbling around in my facility?"**

"I'm looking for something, actually." Maybe if she saw that he meant no harm, she'd let them go. "I need a battery, you see."

 **"A battery? You wanted to steal a battery from me? Wow, so you're boring AND a thief."** She leaned farther into the camera, now taking up the whole screen.

Did she just call him "boring"?!

 _I_ _'m not 'boring'!_ He thought. _I'm the least 'boring' person there is! I'm the opposite of 'boring'!_

"Excuse you, I am not _boring."_ The Doctor retorted. "And I need that battery badly, otherwise I wouldn't be here dealing with your attitude."

" **Oh, really** **? You see, I'm looking at what you were querying, Doctor,** **right now, as we speak.** **And there's something very interesting about that battery. Because that one is meant for Personality Cores only."** She said, before her voice turned cold. **"But all of the Personality Cores in the facility are working fine. And there's only one core that's unaccounted for."**

 _Oh, no._

The Doctor turned around to see all five of the turret robots pointing their lasers at a shivering Wheatley.

The leader's voice dripped with venom. " _ **I knew it.**_ "

The Doctor dashed over to Wheatley, but when he got halfway, two of the five turret robots trained their focus back on him.

He hated guns.

 **"** **Hello again, _moron_."**

Wheatley winced.

 **"What? Don't feel chatty today** **?"** She taunted. **"** **I'm surprised. After all, I'm delighted to see you. I'll finally be able to get my revenge for everything you did to me."**

The Doctor's stomach twisted. "Woah, hold up! Isn't revenge a little over the top? What did he even do?" He yelled at the screen.

 **"Let me guess. He didn't tell you?"**

The Doctor looked at Wheatley again, but he only avoided his gaze.

"Wheatley?"

"I-"

 **"Did he not tell you about the time he almost destroyed this entire building with his stupidity? Or tried to kill me by cramming me into a potato battery? Or tried to kill the only person who saw him for anything other than the idiot he is? Did he not _tell_ you, Doctor?"**

"...Wheatley? Is this true?" The Doctor knew he shouldn't listen to her, but those words put a pit in his stomach. He couldn't just shrug them off, no matter how much he may want to.

 **"He's useless and a liability."** She continued. **"Give him to me, and I'll let you go."**

"...Doctor?" Whimpered Wheatley behind him. The way Wheatley said his name tore his heart in half. It was scared, like a child who had been lost and abandoned in the woods, calling and crying for anyone to save them. But there was also guilt, as though the child knew that it deserved to be abandoned, to be forgotten.

The doctor didn't know if what the female robot had said was true. What he _did_ know was that he had a child to protect, and Heaven help anyone who tried to stop him.

"No deal." The Doctor rebuffed, and walked over to Wheatley. He ignored the red glare of the turret-robots as they followed his for every steps, and blocked the monitor's view of Wheatley. He looked back and offered a small smile, then quickly turning his attention back to the screen.

"R-Really?" Wheatley beamed from behind him. "Oh! Doctor, Doctor thank-!"

The lady cut him off. **"You don't get it."** She backed away from the camera, squinting in frustration and confusion. **"This is a good deal for both of us, and trust me, I'd rather it just be me. I take the moron, and you get to keep your IQ from being siphoned of into his vacuous, empty brain. Frankly, this is better than a dull criminal like you deserves. _Take it._** ** _"_**

"I already said no." He repeated.

"Y-Yeah! What he said!"

"Don't push it."

"O-Oh. Right. I'll stop."

 **"Take the deal, or I _will_ kill you."**

No more games, he decided. It was time to get serious.

"Let me tell you something, hmm... what's your name?" He asked the robot on the screen.

She responded icily, **"GLaDOS.** **"**

"Let me tell you something, GLaDOS. If you knew _anything_ about me, you would know that it's a very bad idea to threaten me. Not only is it incredibly _rude-_ I mean, absolutely terrible manners-It's one of the worst things to say to guests, like, 'Here, try my lemon squares!' _E_ _ugh_." The Doctor sobered. "But I don't play other people's games." He warned, sauntering slowly towards the screen. "I don't _do_ threats."

 **"And what will you do to stop me, thief?"** GLaDOS snarled. **"Shoot me?"**

God, _always_ with the guns. What was so enamoring about guns?

"Oh, no, no, no. Guns aren't my style. What kind of Doctor would I be if I went around shooting people?" The Doctor put his right hand into the pocket with his sonic screwdriver, and began to fiddle with some of the settings as he talked. "After all, why go around shooting things..." _Set that, make an exclusion there, retrieve data from slot two, direct pulse in three hundred sixty degrees and... Ha! There!_ "When I can just do this?"

He whipped the sonic screwdriver out from his coat, and pointed directly above him. The screwdriver let out a loud whine, and the both the monitor and all five turrets shut down. The door _clicked_ as it unlocked, and the Doctor made a mad dash towards the door. As he approached, he slammed the door with his right shoulder, and the door flew open, creating a harsh _clang_ as it hit the metal guardrail outside.

"Come on! Hurry!" The Doctor yelled, holding the door open.

"Whoa, whoa! What just happened?!" Yelled Wheatley from the other side of the room.

"I'll tell you in a minute! Right now, we need to RUN!"

Wheatley seemed to hesitate, but finally sped along the rail and went outside. The Doctor let the door go and began running down the metal pathway, overcoat flapping behind him.

"Ahh! Hold up! Hold up!" Called Wheatley from behind, who had to speed up to catch up with the Doctor.

GLaDOS's voice came out of speakers placed in the bedrock around them. **"You think you're so clever, don't you. No matter, I have eyes everywhere. It won't take long for me to catch you. It's a shame, I was going to give you some cake if you cooperated. Moist, delicious cake. I've heard humans love the stuff."**

The Doctor had to admit, he _did_ love cake, but not quite that much. And it was more that he like jumping out of cakes than eating them, but that was another story.

"Just to confirm, we ARE running away?" Asked Wheatley as he pulled up a little bit ahead of the Doctor.

"Yes Wheatley, we are running away." The Doctor confirmed.

"I set the sonic screwdriver to reset all electronics except for you and the lights in that room." The Doctor explained as he turned a corner.

"Oh, so THAT's what you did! Smart!"

"Thank you." The Doctor replied.

"Okay, next question. Do you have a plan?"

The Doctor paused, then said, "Mostly." He did have a semblance of a plan. Whether it would work, he didn't know. When he had downloaded the blueprints, he'd noticed that someone had tweaked them to highlight a special room marked as hidden from the mainframe. He hoped that would help them when they got there. He currently had it on the screwdriver, which was telling him where to go. He thought about simply calling up the TARDIS, but he knew that it would still be at least another half hour before she'd be ready to fly, and he didn't know if Wheatley had that long.

"Hey, Better than nothing. Better than nothing." Wheatley seemed to console.

"Um, Doctor?" Said Wheatley. "About that stuff she said about what I did..."

The Doctor slowed down to a walk, now curious. Those _had_ been some serious claims. He wanted some answers. "Yeah?"

Wheatley got very quiet. "She... She wasn't wrong. I have done some... _really_ awful things." He looked ashamed. "Really awful things."

He continued "A long time ago, I was desperate to get out of Aperture. I tried to find a test subject that was still alive to help me escape, and eventually, I found one. I never learned her name, but _man alive_ was she good with a portal gun!"

The Doctor was surprised to hear this. Aperture really _had_ been ahead of its time. How did they figure out portal technology?

Wheatley kept on talking. "It turned out that this girl had been the one to shut off GLaDOS almost a hundred years ago. A miracle that I found her of all people, seriously! But by accident I turned her back on, and the girl got trapped in test chamber after test chamber, and _she_ nearly destroyed me in the process. Eventually, I helped her escape, and we confronted _her_ again. We forced _h_ _er_ out of the mainframe, by using me instead. I really had meant to take us both up to the surface, but I just... I loved the feeling of power. Pretty soon I lost my temper and put GLaDOS in a potato battery. I broke the elevator and sent the both of them down to... wherever they went, I don't actually know. They both were fine, and by the time they'd arrived, I'd started losing control of the facility and my head. I had to test, all the time. There was an itch I couldn't scratch, and the only thing that gave me relief was testing the two of them, Just like GLaDOS had. Eventually, I tried to kill them, but again, I failed. The two of them worked together to stop me before the whole facility got destroyed, and in the process, the girl had managed to shoot a portal to the bloody moon and nearly get both of us sucked out into space. Somehow, GLaDOS got control over the mainframe again and pulled the girl back and let me get sucked out with a corrupted core. That was the guy who blew up in the spaceship thing, if you remember. That's how I got into space. Lemme tell you, while I was floating up there, I regretted everything I'd done, _especially_ what I did to the girl. I made a terrible, awful, _miserable_ mistake getting hooked into the mainframe... I really did."

Wheatley didn't say anything for a few seconds, but spoke up again, saying with renewed vigor "But that's not me anymore! I want to make it up to that girl one day, or at the very least apologize. Maybe now I can do that... _if_ we get out of here."

The Doctor took a moment to digest all this new information. He had a feeling that helping Wheatley try to mend his mistakes had been the reason why the TARDIS had locked on to Wheatley's distress call. Before the Doctor could say anything however, Wheatley seemed to struggle to keep up.

"Wow." he said between between huffs, "I, - _huff-_ Don't feel so good _-huff-_. Can you - _huff_ \- catch me?"

Wheatley dropped from the rail, and the Doctor stumbled a few feet forward to catch him. The Doctor succeeded in catching the robot in his arms, but not without getting the wind knocked out of him.

"I-I think the batteries are - _huff_ \- almost out."

 _Almost out?...DAMMIT!_ He'd forgotten about the batteries in the scramble out of the repair ward! He turned the sonic screwdriver on from under Wheatley to run a system check.

What it said was clear. They had fifteen minutes, at most, before Wheatley would stop functioning forever.

Wheatley was dying.

"I'm- _huff-_ going to go on sleep mode. - _huff-_ Try to conserve battery." Mumbled Wheatley, who was struggling to keep his optic open. "Listen, I'm trusting you alright? But just - _huff-_ in case things don't work out, find out who she is. Tell her I'm sorry for everything. Please?"

"O-Of course!" He felt awful. How had he let such a big problem get away from him?

He was going to fix this.

He HAD to fix this.

Wheatley seemed satisfied. "Thank you."

And with that he closed his eye, and went silent.

The Doctor began sprinting, feet pounding on metal. It was much harder to run with a foot-and-a-half diameter ball in his arms messing up his stride, but he just kept putting one foot of the other, _left, right, left, right -_ as fast as he could. He didn't have time to dawdle.

He could only hope that his "plan" worked out in the end.

After several minutes of running, he approached the room described on the blueprints. It featured another door built into the bedrock, but it was much less advanced than the repair ward. It was a simple key based lock, which posed no barrier for him whatsoever. By tugging his sonic screwdriver out from under the robot he held, he swiftly unlocked it. The Doctor pushed the door open with his shoulder.

The room was the size and shape of a large office. Machinery and tanks lined the walls and the ceiling, rattling and rumbling around him. The water heater to his left seemed to be having a conversation with the climate control unit across from it on the other side of the room. The heater would rumble, and every time the climate control would hum in reply. It didn't take long for him to realize that the all the machinery and equipment was the reason the room could stay off the grid.

"Self sustaining room. Clever. Primitive, but still." He said to himself.

There was another black-rimmed computer sitting on a table, with a swivel chair tucked neatly into the table. Above it was a battered bulletin board, covered in a rope of old research papers, taped together with scotch tape. He walked over to the table, and set down the robot so it was adjacent to the computer. In a spur of the moment decision, he yanked the two lines of papers off the bulletin board, and crumpled them up into his coat pocket for safe keeping. He didn't have to worry about space, after all. The pocket was bigger on the inside. Pulling out the swivel chair, he sat down and clicked on the mouse a couple times to wake the computer up. A password screen popped up. The Doctor once again set his screwdriver to unlock, and the computer let him in.

 _Welcome, Doug._

The screen switched to a basic screensaver. On it, a was single file. The Doctor returned his screwdriver to his pocket and used the mouse to navigate, since he didn't know exactly what he would be looking for. The Doctor clicked on the icon, and scrolled through the documents and programs listed inside.

There were dozens, all labeled in complex scientific or engineering jargon. Of course, he knew what they all meant. He _was_ the Doctor. So he kept on scrolling, and kept on scanning.

 _Shit._ There was nothing about batteries on it- replacement or otherwise.

He sonicked Wheatley one more time for a diagnostic. The high pitched whir drowned out the other creaks and moans of the room, and soon came back with the results.

At most, he had two minutes to save him. He growled in frustration. He looked harder, trying to find something, anything he could use.

He wouldn't lose another. He'd make sure of it.

Until he found a something out of place. A program simply listed as "wtl. exe."

He turned the name over in his head. "wtl. exe... Whetlexe... Wait a second!"

He jumped out of the chair, sending it flying to the other side of the room. He hit himself for being so _utterly stupid!_ How hadn't he seen it before?!

"WHEATLEY!" He yelled. "It's bloody Wheatley!"

He slammed his finger on the left-click (with far more force than warranted). The computer thrummed as it ran the program. Exactly two seconds later, a faint _hiss_ emanated from the wall behind him. The Doctor snapped around, worried for a second that GLaDOS had found them.

Instead, a large section of the wall had opened up, and as the Doctor watched, vertical cylinder eight feet tall slid out, the inside opaque due to smoke and steam billowing in wispy clouds. It had silvery metal rims about a foot long on each end, and the bottom one had several small buttons in the center. The Doctor walked over to investigate, his curiosity overpowering any concern. As the Doctor approached, the haze inside the tube faded away.

The Doctor's stomach lurched.

It was a man. It was a young, blond-haired, lanky man, dressed in a wrinkled, white button-down, black slacks and shoes, and an azure tie. A pair of black wireframe glasses were struggling to stay on the their nose, a faded Aperture watermark was pinned on their shirt pocket.

This was a stasis chamber, the Doctor realized. Its occupant, if that program was really what he thought it was...

 _No, it can't... This couldn't be..._

Then this could be none other than _Wheatley._

The Doctor didn't know what to do. This was definitely _not_ what he'd been expecting... Unless... Could he do that? It was a big risk, but big risks were kind of his specialty, right? The more he considered it, the more he was certain that it was the only option available.

He was going to hate himself for this later, but he didn't have a choice. There was no more time. He ran over to the robot on the table, grabbed him by both of his handles, and slid back to the stasis chamber. He probably had a minute to do this, tops.

He dropped to his knees with a _thunk_ , and looked for somewhere he could plug Wheatley into the chamber. He mumbled to himself unconsciously as he searched, saying "Where, where, where..." over and over again. After five seconds of searching, he found a button labeled "port" and pressed it. A small window opened up next to the control panel, and a small port like the one on the management rail popped out. The doctor quickly plugged Wheatley into the chamber, and saw an line of black text appear above the port, in a 5-inch display.

 **CORE STATUS: SUBOPTIMAL**

 **HOST STATUS: OPTIMAL**

 **CORE READY TO TRANSFER**

 **HOST READY FOR TRANSFER**

 **PRESS ENTER TO CONFIRM TRANSFER PROCEDURE**

The screen now displayed two options, ENTER and CANCEL.

"I'm sorry buddy."

He pressed ENTER, and stood back.

A series of _pops, hisses,_ and _whirs_ rang in his ears as the stasis chamber reanimated the host. Suddenly, the clear window into the chamber slid away. Before the Doctor could react, the person inside tumbled out, hitting him with the force of a falling tree. He fell backwards, pinned under a mess of limbs.

The Doctor simply laid there for a minute, trying to figure out the best way to get out of the "unexpected" situation. "I, uhh..." He began shimmying his arms out from under the man, then pushed himself out from under the unconscious body."Meant to do that."

He pushed himself upright with his right arm, and looked back down at the blond man who was stomach down, roadkill-style on the floor. He sighed, running his hand through his hair.

 _What have I got myself into now?_ He wondered. Within the span of a couple of hours, He'd trashed the TARDIS, made enemies with a _very_ powerful robot, and somehow managed to turn another robot into a human- actually, more likely "re"turned, considering.

He had to think about this. He pulled the TARDIS keys out from his inside coat pocket. They looked like regular house or car keys. They were just another part of the TARDIS's chameleon circuit, but at least it looked cool. He tossed them gently in his hand as he thought.

 _If I use the keys to bring the TARDIS here, she would probably have enough juice for a short hop to the surface. We'd be far enough from GLaDOS, at least for a while. But that'd also leave the TARDIS out of commission for a lot longer afterwards. It'd probably be a few day if I did two separate hops now. If we don't leave now, then we run the risk of her finding us, and I have to explain everything to Wheatley off home turf._

Dammit, that's right. He'd have to explain what happened while Wheatley was out.

 _There's a good chance he'll lose his head when he comes to... what should I say when he does?_

If Wheatley didn't remember anything about an old life, or if he really WASN'T this man, the Doctor didn't want to overload him.

 _Telling him everything be a bad idea. Maybe I'll keep it vague,_ _keep him from having an even bigger meltdown, just for a little bit._

That would have to be the plan. Get out, explain, and wait. The Doctor sighed again, a harder, heavier sigh. He'd saved Wheatley, but the trip certainly hadn't been a success.

The Doctor pressed an invisible button on the middle key. Immediately, he heard the TARDIS phasing in on the other end of the room. The TARDIS sounded weaker than normal, normally massive breaths being reduced to spluttering gasps. It hurt him to listen as the spaceship limped its way across spacetime. After nearly thirty seconds, it finally landed. He hated pushing her like this, but sometimes he didn't have a choice.

That was just how things went in his life.

* * *

After getting back into the TARDIS, he'd lifted the other man into the leather car seat. It'd been a struggle to get him in, but with patience and determination, the Doctor had managed to get him situated. A deep red emanated from the lights built into the wall, which always happened when the TARDIS had something wrong with her. He walked over to the control console. He caressed the sides of one of the panels in an attempt to soothe her.

"I know girl, I know... This is really tough for you, I know. I just need one more jump from you, okay? Can you do that for me?"

A harsh _clang_ came from under the console.

"I'm going to go ahead and take that as a yes." He began setting coordinates, hitting all his buttons and levers, then pulled the switch for takeoff.

The ship grumbled and clanged as it took off. The Doctor had to hold on to a gear shift on the panel to keep himself from falling over as the warning bell in the TARDIS echoed harshly through the air as they flew through space-time. After a full minute of shaking, the TARDIS finally settled down. The Doctor let out a sigh of relief.

In the chair 'Wheatley' still lay asleep, beautifully unaware of his situation. Of the _whole_ situation.

A picture of Donna flashed behind his eyes for a moment, and he could almost smell the ocean breeze of the Norwegian Coast _._

A familiar sense of guilt washed over him as he wondered if maybe he hadn't saved him at all.


	5. Mortalis Ex Machina

Yeah. Um. Hi...! I know it's been a little more than three month since the last full chapter was released...

I'll do better next time. Part of the reason this chapter took so long is just a metric crapton of minutiae and weird writing that was really difficult to write smoothly. This chapter is what inspired me to write this silly thing way back in October of 2015, so I really wanted to make it good. HOPEFULLY all the time put into it makes it the best chapter by far, but who knows?

For those of you who haven't read the update I made to chapter 4, I strongly recommend rereading at least the end of it.

But yeah. Thanks all for following and favoriting this story, it really brings a smile no matter where I am when I see that email in my inbox. Enjoy!

* * *

Wheatley felt... _strange_. He didn't feel like he was malfunctioning- or at least, he wasn't notified of any errors- but he definitely didn't feel "right." His memory banks were cloudy and unresponsive, pieces of data barely able to form anything like a memory. He'd only just emerged from sleep mode, and he was already compromised!

 _Brilliant._

Even worse, all his motors were as laggy as his memory. It wasn't unusual for an older robot to be a slow starter, but he'd never felt _this_ sluggish. And his optic was feeling off, and there was this constant hum in his audio receptors...

 _Wait. Robots. Aperture... Yeah! That's right! I think I remember now!_

He had been escaping Aperture with that "Doctor" fella! But, where was Wheatley now? His recollection of the escape was still murky and uneven. They'd been speeding down some corridor or another, Wheatley'd started feeling tired... and... and...

That was as much as he could remember. He'd just have to look around.

Carefully, he opened his optic. He was relieved to see the alien ceiling of the TARDIS. So at least he was somewhere safe. Something felt weird about his vision, though. It was like everything was closer, but somehow farther too. Maybe he'd gotten a new feature while he was out?

 _That'd be nice -new stuff. Long overdue, if we're all being honest, Wheatley thought._

Man, why did he feel so bloody _strange_?!

He looking around, trying to understand what was wrong. The way he was oriented though, the only thing he could "understand" was the roof. Fighting a heaviness he was very sure wasn't there before, he reoriented his chassis to be able to see the whole room. Then he figured out where he was. He was on top of a human.

 _What the hell?! G-Get it off, get it off! How?_ _ **Why**_ _?! I'm feeling very, VERY violated right now!_

He tried to scramble back, and the human began writhing. The chair they both sharing, however, blocked their escape. He could almost feel the weight of the human slamming into the headboard... Or perhaps he actually had?

Wheatley didn't like this. Something was really, really wrong, but what it was continued to escape him- _unlike the human, annoyingly_ -

Then it struck him.

He should be able to see the head from here. From where he was, he should see their head. Humans need a head to survive, he knew that. And this human was very clearly _alive_. The only way he could see the human from this angle would be if...

Maybe he...?

 _No_. Never. He'd never be- He couldn't be-

No. No, no, no. He would try moving the hand, just to prove that it couldn't be what he was thinking. It couldn't be. _Obviously_. He glowered at the appendage, daring it to obey him.

 _Alright. Move...!_

He stared in disbelief as the hand flipped over palm-side up on the leather armrests in time to his command. He willed to flip back over. It obeyed.

 _No_... This was impossible. It had to be a trick.

He tried one last thing. He willed the hand toward his chassis. Instead of just the hand, he saw the whole arm helping it climb its way up. It made its way towards him, slowly and surely. It made contact.

And it felt _all wrong._

It was _soft_. He wasn't soft. He had never been soft. He wasn't angular, or fleshy, or anything that he felt in that moment. Suddenly, everything fit together with harrowing precision.

"No." He whispered. He had not used a sound program to say that. He had used a mouth. The hand fell, but he didn't notice. Something rattled in him. It pounded so loudly. Why?

 _It's a heart._

He realized now that his optic hadn't been shattered in half, instead, he had two optical receptors; two _eyes._

It was all so, so wrong.

The sound of footsteps appeared in front of him, and he looked up. It was the Doctor. He stood a few feet away, moving out from behind the pillar of whatever-it-was at the center of the room. For a moment the Doctor simply stared at him, gaze unwavering, with an expression that could only be described as sorrow.

When the Doctor finally spoke, his voice carried a weight that it hadn't had before.

"I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry."

Wheatley didn't understand what he said at first. Sorry for what? _Sorry for this_ , he realized.

" _You_ did this to me?!"

The Doctor didn't respond for a moment, and then, a quiet "yes" escaped from his lips.

Wheatley looked back down at himself, raising both hands to the eerie orange-green light.

A human... a sad, knobbly, human- that was what he was now. And it was the Doctor's fault. His new hands tightened into fists.

"Why?!" Wheatley demanded. "Wh-? What? Did you think I wouldn't notice or something?! I'm not a... a flippin' idiot like everyone seems to think I am!"

"Wheatley, I'm sorry, but I..." The Doctor's words fizzled out, and the Doctor broke eye contact, seemingly more interested in the color of his shoes than an explanation. "...I was running out of time, and the only thing I could do was transfer you before you were unsalvageable. I found some... test subjects... and I went for it. I'm so sorry, Wheatley. I never meant for it to go this way."

"Why wouldn't another robot work?!"

"There weren't any that were capable of storing so much data nearby."

"Well, I- I can't just _stay_ like this!" said Wheatley. The doctor was silent. "Doctor... I... I _can't_ just stay like this, right?"

"Wheatley... I... I don't know. I got us out of Aperture, so we should be safe, but the TARDIS won't be able to fly for a while. And, well, the only place that's going to be able to get you back is Aperture because the hardware is so specific."

"You're not saying..."

"Yes. You might have to get used to this for a bit."

For once, Wheatley had no words. He just looked back down at himself, feeling something deep inside twist in dread. He was stuck like this. He couldn't just change back, or reset, no. This was it. This was what he was stuck with. This weird, breathing, pulsing, soft _thing_ was him now.

He didn't know what to do. Should he take a closer look at himself? Maybe if he took away some unknowns about the situation, he might feel less scared. So he pushed down his fears as best as he could (which wasn't very well) and leaned forward to get a better view. The first thing he noticed was a wrinkled white button- up shirt. A square was situated in the top left, a few inches below the top of his shoulder. There was a name for it, he knew, but what was it?

"Pocket? That's right, a pocket. Weird word, that. _Pocket_. Hmph, Sounds German-ish." He muttered quietly, feeling the words shape themselves in his mouth unconsciously. The Aperture insignia clung conspicuously to the outside of said pocket, as if mocking him for getting in this situation. Craning his neck, he saw a bright blue tie perched on collar, lazily flopping down to his side. He lifted his left hand and felt it, and was blown away by the softness. He'd never felt something so soft! He stroked it a few more times, entranced by this feeling of happiness radiating from his fingers. Eventually, he stopped, moving on when he noticed some thin metal frames in front of his optics- well, _eyes_. He tried moving the frame things, but when his vision lost any sense of clarity, he hastily put them back. Looking down he saw he was wearing black pants, and white toed shoes with laces, like the Doctor's.

Since he was stuck like this until future notice, so far as he could figure, he should probably figure out how to move around, and more specifically, walk. _When in Rome... Uh... Bring a fiddle?_ He couldn't remember exactly how that phrase went.

 _Eh._ He figured. _Close enough._

He put both hands on the back of the seat he was currently splayed across, and held on as tight as his could manage. "Alrighty," He said, "Can't be that hard, right? I mean, the buggers do it all the time!" Wheatley squished the legs together so when he pushed with his arms, his legs would balance perpendicular to the floor. Probably.

"Alright, on three- No, not on three, that's too much time to think. Make it short. Count of one." he took in a deep breath, and tensed up his arm muscles like pistons."And... o- OOF!" Wheatley's legs crumpled like loose wire under him, and he fell gracelessly to the floor, head and rear colliding painfully with the iron bars protecting the walkway with a painful _clunk_. He hissed in pain, and felt a hand, the left one, try to cover the spot on his head that he hit, only to be stopped by stringy stuff which he assumed must be hair. "Well," He grimaced, "Humans can definitely feel pain. Good thing to know."

The doctor snapped his view away from the monitor when he heard the clang and jogged over to his companion. He knelt down to Wheatley, wearing a face of concern and pity.

"Listen, I know you're mad, livid even, and you have every right to be. He began, voice soft and quiet. His voice gained a hardened edge as he continued. "But until we can figure out a plan, you're going to have to let me help you." The doctor knelt down and put both of his hands out in front of the other man.

Why was he putting his hands out? He stared at them for a moment, before finally inquiring. " ... Is there supposed to be something in them?"

"In them...?" The Doctor gave him a funny look, but it went away a moment later, replaced again with the face of care and concern. "Oh! No, I'm trying to help you get on your feet. Just put your hands in mine, and I'll pull you up." The doctor flashed a lopsided grin, probably trying to reassure him.

Wheatley wished he could have ignored the Doctor, but when he saw how much success he was having on his own, he knew didn't have a any choice but to accept his help. So Wheatley did as instructed, and the doctor leaned back and yanked on his arms, slowly tugging him upright, until he was diagonal to the floor. The doctor called out, voice strained " Your knees! straighten your knees!"

His... Knees? Wheatley felt some subconscious subroutine click in the back of his head. The former core locked the joint in his legs, and after a few more seconds Wheatley finally stood on his own two feet. The doctor's smile seemed to grow, and Wheatley didn't know whether to feel happy or angry about the Doctor's pride.

"Look at you!" The doctor said, giving Wheatley a quick once-over. "Only awake a few minutes and... bloody hell you're a tall bloke aren't you?" The doctor said, staring up at him in amusement.

"Am I?" Wheatley replied, "I haven't really seen a lot of humans since GLaDOS took over. Well, besides those in stasis of course, but they were all hidden in the cryobeds, you know, so I never got a good look at them." He looked down at the Doctor, noticing how the man was about half a foot shorter than him.

"Do you think you can walk?" The Doctor asked.

"Oh... um... walking... right. Step one is stand. Step two... walking. I suppose that should be next plan of attack." He thought about how he'd seen humans walk before, and focused on replicating the action. Wheatley began by lifting his right leg and nearly fell over again, hands instinctually moving from the Doctor's grasp to the steadier safety rail for support.

"I'm going to say walking is a solid 'no' at this point. Very solid 'no.'" It confused him how some movement came naturally, but others were so strange and alien.

"Judging by how quickly you learned to stand, it shouldn't take you too long to learn how to walk. Try it one more time, and this time only bend the knee you're lifting." Wheatley took the Doctor's advice into consideration and tried again, and managed to make his first unstable step. He tried again with the other leg, and was able to move it too. He kept on taking tiny steps, until by the tenth step he was able to walk without the support of the rail.

"Hey! What do you know?" Wheatley said. "I'm getting pretty good at this!" Wheatley certainly didn't like being stuck as a human any more, but at least he was catching on quick.

"Yeah, you are!" the Doctor replied.

"Oh, that reminds me. Do you... want a mirror?"

 _A mirror... Those are used to look at yourself._

"Yeah. I guess I should... take a better look." What did his face even look like?

"Here, I have one in my pocket."

Wheatley watched in amazement as the doctor pulled out a small wallet-sized block from his pocket and unfolded it into a full sized mirror with a couple shakes.

'What is that?!" Wheatley asked.

The Doctor set the mirror down next to Wheatley. "Foldable mirror." he answered plainly, then said "Go ahead, take a look."

Wheatley approached it, nervous about what he would see.

He could barely comprehend that it was himself he was looking at. He saw a man, a tall, thin, pale man. Wheatley waved, and the reflection waved back. So it was definitely him. Wheatley walked closer to the mirror, and took a long look at his face. His hair was a pale yellow, a color he had forgotten had existed for human hair, and his eyes were a bright cobalt blue. The frames he had seen before he now recognized as a pair of large glasses.

Seeing a whole new face where his optic and chassis felt strange and wrong all over again. He looked away from the mirror.

The Doctor asked "You good?" Wheatley only responded "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

The Doctor folded the strange mirror up once more and put it back in his pocket. "Well, the next thing on our list is going to be finding that friend of yours."

"Wait, now?!" Said Wheatley in surprise, He couldn't meet her like this! He wasn't ready!

"She could have some important information. Besides, you wanted to see her again, right? Apologize?"

" I mean, yeah, but how are we even gonna find her?"

"Good ol' fashioned sleuthing!" The Doctor replied, walking over to the TARDIS doors. Wheatley followed him, not knowing what else to do. "We go to the nearest town and ask around." The Doctor threw the doors open. Wheatley was blinded by the light for a second, but as his eyes adjusted he saw an enormous field of wheat, the golden strands swaying on their own under a sky bluer than he'd even seen. The Doctor walked out into the swaying stalks and twirled around, bending the wheat as he spread out his arms.

"Ah, the heartland! Gotta love it!" The Doctor said grinning ear to ear. "Well, are you coming?"

"Uh...Yeah. Gimme a sec." Gathering up his courage, Wheatley gingerly stepped into the field.

 _I'm... outside._ He realized. _I'm outside for the first time in my life!_

He felt the wind brush his face and the sun warm his skin, and forgot for half of a moment that anything was wrong at all.


	6. Mostly Walking

Uh. Hey.

So... 6 months...

Sorry about that.

Yeah I'm just gonna be blunt. This has definitely fallen to the wayside as of late. Not because I've stopped caring about this story, because I do. In fact I've thought about it almost every day. But every time I thought about it, I found myself not looking forward to hashing out more of the story. I wasn't dreading it, but I wasn't excited about it either- and I don't want the story to suffer because I just want to throw a poorly thought out chapter in and get it over with. So I think I'm gonna put this story into the dreaded "hiatus" status- wait for the inspiration to come back to me, as I'm sure it will. Wheatley and the Doctor haven't seen the end of their journey staring at a field of wheat for the rest of their lives, I assure you. Maybe it'll take 6 months, maybe a year. It'll come back, I promise. And I don't make promises lightly.

So here's this last chapter that I've been working on. As before, critique is encouraged (really), and Follows and Favorites mean the world!

* * *

After an hour of walking in the field that he and the Doctor began their search, Wheatley realized something.

Walking was awful.

Perhaps if they had been walking for a short while, it wouldn't be so bad- but they had been walking for ages at this point. It felt like days, but he knew that couldn't be right. At least he thought that couldn't be right. Time, like a lot of other things, was proving incredibly difficult to track as a human. It was so much easier before, all he had to do was pull up his internal clock and bam, he had the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and millisecond. Granted, some of the bigger stuff like years or months had become slightly corrupted over time, but his basic timekeeping was fine- perfect even. Now he was finding he had none of that innately stored in his memory. He was relying on guesswork now. All he knew was that it had been a long time.

His feet hurt. He didn't know feet could hurt, but they did. They begged him to stop. He bloody hated being human. Hated it to no end.

"Doctor... How much farther do we have to go?" Whined Wheatley to the brown overcoat swaying in front of him.

The Doctor turned around with his face glued to the glowing end of his sonic screwdriver.

"It shouldn't be too long, I don't think. We're definitely going the right way...right?" With a single motion the Doctor spun around with his screwdriver-arm outstretched, turning into a human compass before stopping when his back to Wheatley, then retracted the arm and turned around once again. "Right. My best guess is about another hour until we see life, which considering we've only been walking for an hour isn't too bad."

"An hour?! We've been moving for longer than an hour, we must have!"

"No, it's been an hour... almost on the dot, actually. Trust me, I'm good with time."

"Well, I, uh..." Wheatley stammered uncomfortably, realizing he couldn't actually refute the Doctor's claim. "It feels longer."

He started walking again, looking over his shoulder at Wheatley as he said "I don't doubt it. Getting used to a circadian rhythm isn't going be easy when you're used to a clock."

"A what?" Wheatley caught up to the Doctor so they were walking side by side.

"Circadian rhythm! Not only is it fun to say, It's one of the most crucial things for humans in order to function. It's pretty basic- s'mostly focused on the release of melatonin into the bloodstream as sunlight decreases, but it gets the job done. For most things that need a specific time, they use a watch or another nearby clock."

"Watch, watch..." Something was rattling around in his memory as he thought about it. Suddenly a shroud lifted over a scrap of memory. Two humans talking over a computer, while he was suspended above them.

"Hey, when is that test supposed to happen?" One turned their head towards another.

"12:30 sharp." Said the other, still focused on the screen.

"You have a watch, right? What time is it now?"

The second one looked at a device on their wrist. "12:29 sharp."

The memory fell away as silently as it came, leaving his head uncomfortably empty as he lost his original train of thought.

They continued, Wheatley asking the Doctor how long it would be until they reached whatever he was scanning for, until something in the distance caught his eye.

It was a building. Bright red. A tower, bright metal on the top and red as well. What it was, Wheatley didn't know or care. It was a break. A break! His feet hurt so much, he couldn't stand it. All he wanted was somewhere to stop. He pointed his arm out at directed the Doctor's attention towards the buildings, who had been twirling his screwdriver around and throwing it in the air like a baton.

"There we go!" He said in delight. "Only took a couple hours! Not bad for on foot."

"Not bad for on foot, not bad for on foot...!" Wheatley huffed under his breath. "I don't have any idea how you got to that conclusion. I can't walk for another minute! I think my feet may fall off!"

"Oh, calm down. It's not like we've been walking all day. You're just not used to it."

"I-" Wheatley sighed. "Fine. Let's just get over there already."

After grumbling for several minutes about his foot pain, they arrived at small brown house. It had nestled itself gently between the silo and the barn, making it hard to see from afar. As the pair got closer, the wooden structure stepped out from its hiding place to greet them. It didn't look anything like what Wheatley had seen in Aperture. Nothing was made of wood in Aperture. He wondered why this one was made with such flimsy stuff. Then he considered that this wasn't Aperture, and things were probably allowed to be a little less battle-hardened than in the death-facility.

Huh, 'death' facility. I like that. Certainly fits.

"Alright," The Doctor instructed as they walked up the patio towards the door, "just follow my lead, and don't say anything unless I say so."

The Doctor hit a small button by the door, and inside a muffled ding-dong echoed gently inside. An explosion of sound then tore through the house at breakneck speed, awakened by the bell. The flurry of noise seemed to stop at the door, where Wheatley picked up the sound of two different creatures threatening whatever had disturbed their sleep, their shouting and scrabbling overwriting the other.

"Doctor! What did you do?!"

"It's fine. It's just a couple dogs, pretty excitable ones I'd wager."

"They sound like they want to kill us!"

"They're just barking because they're excited to see us. Now remember what I said, stay quiet unless I-"

Before Wheatley could make up his mind about whether to run from the door or not, a third voice seemed to arrive on the other side. They shouted something in a deep, gravelly voice, and the first two seemed to stop. The door opened to show a 6-foot, slightly portly man; probably close to retirement age. Snowy stubble and a light sprinkling of hair accented his long, tired face as he looked up slightly at the two of them. Sitting at his side there were what Wheatley had to guess were two 'dogs'. Their coats were both splashed with brown and white. Something attached to their behind was spasming behind them, like someone someone waving at an old friend. They kept looking back between the two of them and the man, occasional high-pitched whines escaping from their maws.

"Hello? Who're you?" The man in the door asked tiredly.

"My partner here is Wheatley," The Doctor gestured to Wheatley with a flick of his wrist "and you can call me the Doctor."

"Doctor what?" The man inquired. His voice was unchanged but his left eyebrow had raised quizzically.

"Just the Doctor. We were wondering if you could answer a couple questions for us."

The man looked at both of them inscrutably.

"No." The man made a motion to close the door, but the Doctor pulled something out of his chest pocket,

"Wait-! Wait. Here, take a look at this."

It was hard to tell from where Wheatley was standing, but it looked to be a leather wallet of some kind. The Doctor held it open in front of the man, and to Wheatley's surprise the man seemed content with it.

"Oh, you're researchers. I guess that changes things. Come on in."

The man moved to let the Wheatley and the Doctor into the house.

"Thank you very much." said the Doctor as he pocketed the wallet. "And what's your name?"

"Rob." The man answered. "Rob Carver."

Rob and the Doctor shook hands, the latter thanking the former. Rob gestured at the two of them to follow as he turned back inside.

"Go on- get, get." The large man shooed the dogs away from the doors so the Doctor and Wheatley get inside.

Wheatley walked inside, keeping as much space between him and the dogs, scooting along the doorframe. Their cheery, drool-y smile didn't fool him.

The inside of the building was also made with wood, but at least the floor was made of some grey tile, not unlike a lab floor. To the right was a small kitchen, kept neat despite the mediocre working space. To the left there was what looked like a break room, equipped with two old leather chairs, a couch, and a monitor on the wall facing the entrance. The floor in the room on the left was replaced with a dark green rug.

Rob walked over to the chair closest to the door and lowered himself in.

"Well? Close the door." Rob waved Wheatley towards the door.

Wheatley did as Rob asked.

The Doctor took a spot on the couch, and Wheatley decided to do the same. Then, The Doctor started asking questions.

"Mr. Carver, what can you tell us about the nearest town?"

"It's a town." Replied Carver simply.

"A name?"

"Gladstone."

"What's the story of Gladstone?"

"It used to be a mining town a century and a half ago, but one day a strange fella with a lot of money came in and bought all the mines. Town began to stagnate after that. All the buildings look like they belong in another era. People still live there, but visitors like yourself are pretty rare."

"A strange man? What was his name?" The Doctor queried.

"I dunno what his name was. Just that he was rich."

"You know, I'd love to see this place. For research purposes, of course. About how far away is Gladstone?"

Carver pointed out the window. "About 4 miles east by the road."

The Doctor thanked him and got up, signaling Wheatley to do so as well.

After carefully weaving around the dogs, the two of them left the farmhouse and began walking down the dirt road as the farmer directed.

After another hour of walking, Wheatley noticed something blocky shimmering in the distance.

"Doctor! Look over there!" Wheatley pointed in the direction of the shape in the distance, and saw a brilliant smile spread spread across the Doctor's face.

"What do you know? We're starting to make some progress."

The Doctor picked up the pace, forcing Wheatley to do so as well. He was still unsure of what the Doctor's big plan was, but for now he would follow him. He had to trust that the Doctor knew what he was doing. He didn't really have a choice.

So they walked for another few hours, the specs in the distance becoming larger and more detailed. The road too became more worn and solid, eventually being replaced with asphalt. They were only about five minutes away from the pile of buildings when they were greeted by a small plaque reading:

GLADSTONE

POPULATION 2000

SMALL COMMUNITY

BIG HEART

"Well, there you go!" The Doctor said proudly. "We're here!"


End file.
